My computer is waking itself up!

[hellosailor]

W530 stuck on Win10 v.1510 (?) an older Win10 version. (Older because it can't upgrade past this. Don't ask now.)

Normally I just suspend it, watch to make sure it has powered down, and close the lid at night.
And lately (month or two?) I've been noticing the fan is on at a good power when I wake up, indicating the machine has TURNED ON. Sure enough when I open the lid it is waiting for me to sign in.

Malware scans say there is no malware problem. Task Scheduler showed only some standard hp/lenovo/ms upgrade tasks scheduled, and I've gone through and literally killed every last one of them, so there are no visible tasks scheduled.

So the question is...what can wake a sleeping computer? Where can I find it and kill it?

The computer is on AC power usually, so this isn't a critical battery-killer. But it is annoying and raises my paranoia alert. Could a power flicker (lights do sometimes blink in stormy weather) be enough to wake the computer, even though it is sleeping? Is there someplace else to look for software that might be in the background trying to run updates or scans?

[shawross]

I had a similar problem on my X201 which seemed to get worse on Windows 10.

In my case when I went away for a couple of months I would come back to a completely flat battery. This was despite having a nearly new extended battery so I would have to remove the battery if I remembered.

Windows 10 frustrated me also because it was always wanting to update and phone home.

I went into the bios and looked at what was enabled and I saw WIMAX enabled so I disabled this as I only use WIFI. After it booted my X201 struggled to get a WIFI connection and I thought WTF.

I had been planning to do this as I had on all my other machines but I re-installed Windows 7 about 2 months ago. Since then the problem has disappeared and I restarted the X201 today after being shutdown for 2 weeks and the battery percentage hasn't decreased at all.

I am hoping that my problem is solved but I don't know if my problem was just Windows 10 or a combination of that and WIMAX. YMMV
I have Intel ME disabled but I know it can't be fully disabled and I don't know if ME uses WIMAX.

Good luck because it is a frustrating issue and I thought my mobo was faulty and it still might be but so far so good .

[hellosailor]

Thanks. I found the system logs yesterday, and for the life of me there's nothing in there that would seem to be a "self triggering" event that would wake the computer. In the interest of burning the house down [sic] I made sure to disable the wake-on-lan functions of the ethernet port, even though that's turned off and my router should be blocking any attempts to send wake-up packets in.

There's also something odd about the way Win10 disables the Lenono power management features, sometimes I had noted that simply lifting the lid would wake the computer--and it shouldn't, until there's some extra manual input. I normally have the "lid" options set to ignore the lid position, since I'll close it and leave a/v scans, etc. running. But I changed that to "sleep on lid closed" and last night, the computer stayed asleep for the first time in ages. Co-incidence? Dunno, but it might be enough to block whatever actually was the culprit.

I'm really not intrigued by the replacement choices (or costs) for this machine...but the temptation to fix Win10, by reverting to 7 again, just keeps getting stronger, no matter how many bugs I figure out how to swat.

These are yesterdays strings, the first group being my shut-down for the night, the 10AM group being when the computer woke itself, the one after that being when I got back to find it already awake, FWIW. I'm not sharp enough to see any meaning in them.

Information 10/6/2017 12:26:36 AM Kernel-General 16 None
Information 10/6/2017 12:26:46 AM Kernel-Power 42 (64)
Information 10/6/2017 10:54:05 AM BROWSER 8033 None
Information 10/6/2017 12:26:49 AM Kernel-Power 107 (102)

Information 10/6/2017 10:54:04 AM Kernel-General 1 None
Warning 10/6/2017 10:54:05 AM e1cexpress 27 None
Information 10/6/2017 10:54:05 AM Kernel-Boot 30 None
Information 10/6/2017 10:54:05 AM Kernel-Boot 18 None
Information 10/6/2017 10:54:05 AM Kernel-Boot 32 None
Information 10/6/2017 10:54:05 AM Kernel-Boot 25 None
Information 10/6/2017 10:54:05 AM Kernel-Boot 27 None
Information 10/6/2017 10:54:05 AM Kernel-General 16 None
Information 10/6/2017 10:54:06 AM BTHUSB 18 None
Information 10/6/2017 10:54:06 AM Power-Troubleshooter 1 None
Information 10/6/2017 10:56:27 AM Ntfs (Microsoft-Windows-Ntfs) 98 None

Warning 10/6/2017 11:54:05 AM DNS Client Events 1014 (1014)

[shawross]

If there was a problem with your ME or it was a bit over exuberant then this happens on another CPU so I don't think your system would detect it.

In my case and your case it is beyond me to be honest. With ME I might be barking up the wrong tree but I am wary of these backdoors and problems they could invoke in "Business Class Laptops".

It is your call obviously but I got fed up with Windows 10 and all my laptops are back to Windows 7. YMMV

[hellosailor]

"your ME" Huh? My what?

I feel the same way about Win7, but having seen support for XP and Vista drop and a resulting potential security problem, I'd like to stay ahead of the curve. Also, new hardware won't work with Win7. There is and will be no support for USB-C, Thunderbolt, and a host of i/o devices, as well as 7th gen Core CPUs. At some point, that will be more than an inconvenience.

[jaspen-meyer]

A power flicker could turn the machine on if bios is set to 'wake on power' (I'm not sure what the exact wording is, or whether it's included on the w530).

'ME' is short the Intel Management Engine.

[shawross]

'ME' is short the Intel Management Engine

Thanks. I thought "hellosailor" realised.

It is something to be wary of and AFAIK can't be disabled unless you use a non intel bios. Normally it doesn't interfere YMMV but if there was a malfunction with ME then maybe it could run excessively.
Apparently there is similar in AMD and ARM but obviously details are scarce.

[hellosailor]

I hadn't played with the management engine. There was no simple clear explanation of what it might do FOR me, so I said screw it and didn't enable anything there. I don't think it ever appeared before W10.

[RealBlackStuff]

Just do a Google with: switch off intel me
Plenty info about how to switch off that obnoxious ME backdoor/spyware.

[hellosailor]

But then Gargoyle would know I'm trying to switch it off, and they'd tattle to Intel, who would send the stealth ninjas in the moon suits to come around in the middle of the night and send magic packets to wake my LAN and hack into my computer to turn it back on. Catch-22.
(VBG)

It can be good sport actually, to corrupt all these online datamining operations. (Emerson lake & Palmer, Karn Evil 9 perhaps?)

[shawross]

Gargoyle can get nicked because I am staying on Windows 7 for another 5 years at least.

[hellosailor]

Well, either I'd better try to corner the market in tinfoil hats (genuine tin, because aluminium just doesn't work the same way) or some of the talk about "wtf is intel up to anyway?" really is worrisome. There's mystery code that keeps special ports open at all times? And is so persistent that federal agencies have had to ask for ways to disable it? But Intel's only comments are along the lines of "Ignore the man behind the curtain. Ignore the curtain, too."

WTF?! REALLY ?!

And those seem to be the more reasonable and considered comments that I could find online.

[shawross]

911 was the catalyst for this mass surveillance which pervades our software and hardware. Intel and other companies need to tow the line and play along.

[Thinkpad4by3]

My IBM PC 5150 has been working for 36 years. They won't find me there, especially underneath the steel and thick plastic shell it has. A 14.4K modem should work to get on the internet, but not get the traffic through to where I am!!

Now I need to figure out how to get on YouTube with it....

[frankparisi]

Could it be the "awake from sleep" checkbox found in the "change advanced features" in Microsoft battery management "Power options"

[hellosailor]

No such option in the MS Power Options menus here.
There was something similar somewhere else, among the things I turned off after the original post. But you still need an EVENT to "awake from sleep" and there were no events happening. At least, none scheduled or logged.

Which leaves the unlikely but possible unauthorized Magic Packet over the Wifi connection. (Also now disallowed.)